SIEGEL: Well, of course. Those two everyday words figured in the Scripps National Spelling Bee that ended in a rare tie yesterday.

BLOCK: My colleague and corpsbruder on this daily audio feuilleton and I want to congratulate the winners -

SIEGEL: Who finished as close as a pair of tight antigropelos.

BLOCK: Thirteen-year-old Ansun Sujoe and 14-year-old Sriram Hathwar.

SIEGEL: It looked, for a moment, like Hathwar, the favorite to win, wasn't going to make it to the end.

(SOUNDBITE OF SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE)

SRIRAM HATHWAR: Corpsbruder. K-O-R-B-R-U-I-T-E-R. Corpsbruder.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

BLOCK: That's a close comrade, when spelled correctly. But then Sujoe missed a word, too.

(SOUNDBITE OF SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE)

ANSUN SUJOE: Antigropelos. A-N-T-I-G-R-O-P-O-L-O-S? Antigropelos?

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SIEGEL: Which are watertight leggings - they evidently leak when misspelled. So it went on, to the point where Scripps had only two words left. Hathwar had to spell that word, Melissa, that always comes up when we're just shooting the breeze about repetition and antithesis in ancient Greek verse drama.